My fingers rest against his chest, and for the first time since the auction, I don’t feel like I’m trying to claw my way back into myself. I’m here. With him.
Cobra doesn’t sleep.
I can tell.
His body is too alert beneath mine. Too watchful. But he stays still for me. Stays warm. Stays wrapped around me like he’s a wall the world can’t get through.
I press my lips lightly to his chest. “Thank you,” I whisper.
His arm tightens. “Don’t thank me for loving you.”
My eyes burn again, but this time it doesn’t hurt the same. I close them.His mouth brushes my hair.
No one touches me again.
He doesn’t say it out loud. He doesn’t have to.
I feel it in the way he holds me. In the way his breathing never fully slows. In the way his body stays ready even while mine finally gives in to rest.
No one touches me again.
Ever.
Church smells like smoke, coffee, and blood.
Nobody says that. Nobody needs to.
It’s in the room anyway.
The morning light doesn’t reach in here. It never really does. Church is closed off from the rest of the clubhouse, built for decisions that don’t belong near women or kids or anyone who doesn’t wear the cut and understand what that means. Usually, the room feels like power. Like order. Like the place where club business gets stripped down to truth and handled.
Today, it feels exhausted.
Coffee cups are scattered between open folders, phones, bloody rags, and printed reports Dom probably hasn’t stopped pulling since last night. Every man at the table looks like he’s been dragged through hell and came back missing pieces no one can see.
Logan sits at the head, but he’s angled slightly different today. Weight off one leg. Knee braced under the table. His face doesn’t show pain, but the set of his jaw does.
Landon sits with his upper arm wrapped thick, bandage clean now instead of soaked through. He looks paler than usual, but his eyes are clear, and his laptop is still open in front of him because men in this club have never learned how to sit the fuck down when they’re injured.
Cain leans back in his chair, arms crossed, expression carved hard. Carter is quiet, his hand flexing occasionally like he’s still feeling the fight in his bones. Dom has two screens open, wires running across the table like this room is half command center now. Shadow sits still. Hammer looks like he slept standing up for fifteen minutes and called it good. Joker is too calm, which means the darkness in him hasn’t gone back to sleep.
Blaze is the only one who almost looks normal. Almost.Even his mouth is quieter today.
I sit near the end. Still. Watching. Not because I have nothing to say. Because everything in me is being held in a place so tight it can’t waste energy.
Olivia is upstairs. Sleeping. That fact sits beneath every other one.
It is the only reason I’m in this chair instead of in the basement, taking the men we brought back apart piece by piece until every route, name, buyer, handler, and account falls out of them.
Logan looks around the table once. Then he speaks. “Report.” No speech. No reminder of what we survived. No dramatic bullshit. Report. That’s why he’s president.
Dom starts first. “Warehouse is cleaned enough. Cameras in the area are wiped or looped. Bodies handled. Survivors are secured downstairs.”
“How many dead?” Logan asks.
“Seven from the warehouse,” Cain answers. “Two died on site. Five during cleanup before transport because they were too fucking stupid to stop reaching for weapons.”
Joker sighs. “Sad.”
